… courtesy of the tree-hugging Left
 
 

• Wildfires burning across western states
• Hundreds Evacuate as Thousands of Acres Burn Across Western States
• Wildfires threaten homes in Idaho, Washington, California and Oregon

 
To be fair, the eco-fanatics aren’t the sole cause of wildfires, but their over-bearing regulations, in the name of saving-the-environment, certainly help fan the flames.
 
The truth is – bad land management is a huge part of the problem. Rather than facilitating responsible use of our vast natural resources, radical environmentalists are enforcing an unrealistic “don’t touch” approach.

 
The U.S. National Forest system, established during the progressive era at the turn of the last century, actually started out as a pretty good idea. Initially the lands were to be “managed;” that is fished, hunted, logged and mined responsibly – and not left idle to be admired from afar.
 
But like all pleasant-sounding proposals by leftist control freaks, it’s now just another bloated federal bureaucracy run amok. What began as a program for good land stewardship has evolved into “ecological forestry.” That’s one of those warm and fuzzy, purposely vague terms that supposedly means “everything is connected to everything.” And isn’t that quite a handy motto for authoritarians who want to control “everything?”
 

The following video exposes the rotten fruits of their efforts ~

(It) examines the progressively weakening and increasingly threatened circumstances of U.S. counties that host National Forests. It was produced by the Not Without a Fight! Coalition, an informal group comprised of Shoshone County, Idaho’s county commissioners and three of the county’s four school district superintendents.

Last April the Congressional Subcommittee on Federal Lands held an oversight hearing on the devastating impacts of wildfire and the need to significantly increase the forest management efforts on the National Forest System ~

“Over the past thirty years, we have seen an 80 percent reduction in timber harvested from our national forests – and in the same period a concomitant increase in acreage destroyed by fire,” Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock (CA-04) stated. “In the name of protecting endangered species, we placed increasing tracts of land off limits to forest management, allowing our forests to become dangerously overcrowded and overgrown.”
 
“The full impact of these neglectful policies can be seen in the contrast between privately managed forest lands and public…Time and again, we see vivid boundaries between the young, healthy, growing forests managed without these restrictions, and the choked, dying or burned public forests managed under them,” McClintock added.

 
The Subcommittee’s findings included the following ~

• National forests are increasingly becoming overgrown, fire-prone thickets due in part, to a lack of active management such as thinning forests to reduce fire danger. As a result, catastrophic wildfires are growing in number, size and intensity with devastating impacts to the environment.
 
• The Forest Service recently identified 58 million acres as high risk for catastrophic wildfire or almost a third of the 193 million acre National Forest System. Due in part to increasing and lengthy regulatory processes and legal challenges, this year the agency plans thinning on less than three percent of that acreage.
 
• From the mid 1950’s through the mid 1990’s, the average amount of timber harvested from the national forests averaged ten to twelve billion board feet. During the same period, the average annual amount of acres burned due to catastrophic wildfire, was 3.6 million acres per year.
 
• Since 1996, the average amount of timber harvested annually was between 1.5 and 3.3 billion board feet. Also since 1996, the average annual amount of acres burned due to catastrophic wildfire was over six million acres per year.

 
Given those statistics, you’d think if the tree-huggers really cared about the forests they would promote the responsible-use policies of thirty years ago. Not only would the environment be healthier – so would the economy.
 
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Related:
Where are the wildfires burning? ~ NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) map updated every 24 hours